


I Am Titanium

by cerie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: AU, Angels, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 16:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing that remains of their divinity are two feathers, one jet and one snow, floating on the ebbing tide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Titanium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [convenientmisfires](https://archiveofourown.org/users/convenientmisfires/gifts).



> This started as a challenge with [Sam](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Convenientmisfires) for me to prove I could sell her on _any_ AU, even something so ridiculous as Helen and Will as guardian angels. It became an actual fic with some semblance of a plot, so I believe I was the one who was trolled.
> 
> So, here you have it, Helen and Will as angels. Also, for more inspiration, please listen to [this instrumental version of Titanium by David Guetta.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz4MzJTeL0c&list=UUmKurapML4BF9Bjtj4RbvXw&index=6)

_but i can’t hear a word you say_

“Why can’t we do something? It’s not fair just to watch.”

Sometimes it’s hard for Helen to remember that Will was ever human except in moments like these, when he fights against the rules that bind their powers and wants to help someone. Guidance is allowed, of course, and humans can only become guardians. Helen isn’t a guardian. She’s a death-angel, feared and respected, and she holds fate between her fingers. Guardians and Destroyers don’t normally interact with one another but Will, inexperienced and naive, needed a stronger hand than the other guardians could afford to spare. Helen volunteered.

Sometimes she wonders if that was a wise decision. She sighs (a human affectation, but one she’s picked up in thousands of years of this work) and watches as the girl trades a few dirty bills for a bag of drugs. Cocaine, Helen thinks, and it’s not the first time for this girl. Will’s been trying to steer her away from it, make it easier to drop the habit and move on, but she hasn’t responded to his more subtle tactics and he’s called Helen in to help.

“Interfering with mortals is a death sentence, Will, and quite literally. He doesn’t like it when we overstep our bounds. Unlike you, I’ve never been anything but this. I’m not keen on falling to earth without my glory or my wings. I suggest you learn a bit of prudence when it comes to these matters and stop being so impetuous.”

Will huffs lightly beneath his breath and gestures his hand toward the girl. “How can you not _do_ something? She’s dying, Helen, and she’s screaming for help and we can give it to her and you just stand here? It’s like you don’t have a heart at all sometimes.”

He’s angry, which isn’t a sin in and of itself, but it’s far more passion than Helen’s ever experienced outside of a human being. Will is still so close to that and it’s beautiful, a tangible reminder of all she works for. She lays a hand lightly against his wing and smooths down a (quite literal) ruffled feather.

“Watch and you’ll see,” she promises. “All things cycle, Will, and you may find her heart softer and more open if she’s had a visit from me tonight.”

Will swallows, jaw tight, and nods. It’s not entirely conventional but there’s more than one way to save a soul.

_ricochet_

Helen doesn’t exactly have the emotional skillset that guardians wield, mostly owing to the fact that she’s never been human. She is, like all destroyers, eternal and cannot be made or unmade by anything but her equal or higher. She can make herself look like a human, certainly, and she can blend into society easily enough but there’s something about human emotions that simply escapes her. She cannot comprehend any of them, except perhaps anger, because that’s something that even He is capable of when the occasion suits. Tonight, she’s had a difficult night.

She hates going to the children’s wards the most, knowing that these parents and friends will grieve harder and longer for a life snuffed out early than someone who comes willingly into her embrace after a long, full life. She’s brought three souls home tonight, none over the age of ten, and afterward she finds herself in an abandoned park beneath a moonless sky. 

She settles on one of the swings and grips the chains lightly in her hands. She’s still in human form, smaller and weaker than she’s used to, and she thinks that possibly she’s been spending too much time with Will because she’s _feeling_ a lot more than she’s used to as well and it’s not entirely pleasant.

It startles her when she feels hands at her back and her body draws tight, primed to change and assess this threat, when she hears the familiar timbre of his voice. “Don’t do anything crazy, it’s just me. I thought you might need someone, so, here I am.”

Helen frowns a little but she relaxes all the same, swinging just enough that the wind ruffles her hair and her feet scrape the grass below her. Will pushes her lightly, helping her gain momentum and Helen pumps her legs to go higher and faster. It’s exhilarating in a strange way. She can _fly_ in her natural form and travel in but the span of a moment but somehow this has lifted her spirits and made her feel like something else entirely, something brand new.

When she either gets tired of swinging or he gets tired of pushing, Helen slows to a stop and twists so that she can see Will’s face. He’s settled on the swing next to hers, hands gripping the chains, and he scrapes at a bit of rust with a fingernail while she speaks.

“I don’t like bringing the little ones home,” she murmurs. It’s an admission of weakness, something she normally never does in front of anyone else. “Their families are more upset than the older ones and it makes me uncomfortable.”

Will shifts out of the swing, causing it to creak, and kneels down in front of her. He brushes her hair back off her cheek and rubs his thumb against her cheekbone, following that line up and past her ear before he drops his hand down to her knee. “No, it made you feel. You’re starting to have emotions, aren’t you?”

She nods slowly. For so long, she’s been unassailable and unchanged, a constant, an arbiter of life and death. Now, since Will’s come under her tutelage, instead of teaching him to become dispassionate it seems that he’s taught her to start feeling instead. It’s not a juxtaposition she’s entirely comfortable with. She’s also not comfortable with the fact that he’s brushing his lips against her forehead; it’s only a simple touch but it seems to make her burn like fire.

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Will says, but his voice seems far away. Helen doesn’t know precisely how much trouble she’s managed to get herself into but all she does know is that she wants more of it, preferably soon.

This is problematic.

_you take your aim_

She doesn’t reap souls tonight.

She’s meant to, of course. Helen always has souls to carry home and she’s never had trouble doing that but tonight’s soul is a newborn, something so precious and so desperately clinging to life that it seems a waste to destroy it. She has always thought of herself as a balancing force rather than strictly good or evil. Helen has always strived for neutrality in all things and in this, she’s failed miserably.

She hasn’t been anything remotely resembling neutral since Will became her partner.

She doesn’t reap the newborn and, instead, breathes a little life into him so that his struggling lungs work a little better. It’s more interference than she should normally ever involve herself in but she doesn’t think it’s enough to cause anyone to check into her methods or bring her into Oversight. Even angels have bureaucracy, something Helen has always loathed. Will loathes it even more than she does.

She finds him on earth, but in human form. He’s watching one of his charges and encouraging her, steering her away from a path that would certainly lead to unpleasant futures. Helen watches as he does so, dressed as a nondescript beggar, and wonders if Will is ever going to play by the rules. Perhaps more important to her own place and station, she wonders if she wants him to ever _start_ following them. She thinks there might be merit in a more direct approach.

Snow starts to drift down and Helen shifts from her angelic form to a human one, enjoying the cold sting of the flakes against her bare cheeks. Will turns and smiles at her, wide and genuine, and Helen does something impulsive. She’s never been prone to that in all her millennia of existence but there’s something about Will that drives her to it, that drives her to push the boundaries and seek new and exciting sensations. Tonight’s is to press her mouth fully against his in a kiss, something she only knows about from watching humans do it over and over again and has never experienced for herself.

Nothing could have prepared her for the shock of it. More than just pressing their bodies together, kissing Will is like reading him in a way she’d never known was possible and he wraps an arm around her, pulling her impossibly close and threading his hand in her hair to hold her close as he deepens it. His teeth scrape lightly against her lower lip and his tongue brushes against hers silken-slick, learning her in a way that Helen is fairly certain she was never meant to be known.

This, she supposes, is his form of alchemy and the transmutation leaves her forever changed inside even if she looks the same on the outside.

This is treacherous and she’s not afraid of it. Not now.

_fire away, fire away_

Helen keeps her distance now. She’s coolly polite and professional whenever she and Will have dealings and neither of them talk about the kiss. It’s a human thing to do, to kiss, and she is meant to be ageless, sexless and eternal and above such things. Will is still too close to his humanity to completely give it up and it’s always good for a guardian to retain that so Helen says nothing to anyone higher up about what happened. There’s no point. Both of them can simply move on.

Except, she finds, she cannot.

Will’s emotions have affected every aspect of who she is and changed her from cold and unfeeling to something volatile and rough around the edges. She has fits of passion, both angry and not, and she thinks about him constantly. Whenever she isn’t with him, she wants to be, and she wants to move past their simple kiss into things base and vulgar and not meant for the creatures they’ve become.

Still, if Will was meant to have evolved from mortal to eternal and failed, she wasn’t meant to have devolved into something she’s never been. It’s wrong on every level but every single cell in her body screams out for him until she takes wing and finds him. She needs him and she needs him to know what’s he’s done to her is irrevocable, that he’s planted a seed of change that’s taken root and it’s threatening to destroy who she is.

“What have you done to me?” she asks, voice trembling a little with the sheer amount of emotion she has. It’s like she’s vibrating with it, that every molecule is humming and aligning itself with him. She never wanted to be so attuned to another creature and now it’s happened without her permission.

“What? Helen, I’m sorry about the kiss, it just happened, but I didn’t think...I didn’t think it would make you this upset. What’s going on?”

He’s still so damnably _human_ and that’s the bloody problem. He brings out the worst in her and Helen lets out a low sound of frustration before turning on her heel and taking to the sky again, putting as many miles and planes of existence between the two of them as she can. Maybe if she separates them with all the physical and metaphysical space in the universe, she’ll forget he ever did this to her.

A small, soft voice tells her that’s simply going to be impossible.

_but i won’t fall_

He finds her this time in one of her favorite places on earth: a small, private island that has no humanity encroached upon it and seems to be lost and hidden from the modern world. There’s nothing but a stretch of sandy white beach and aqua water and Helen sits there with wings unfurled and toes curled deep into the sand.

Will sits beside her without asking, his own wings still open, and Helen looks over at where they meet: shining jet and snowy white. They are opposites in every sense of the word and instead of it repelling them, it only seems to draw them closer. She lays her head upon his shoulder and watches the tide roll in.

“I don’t want to sacrifice what I am for this, Will. I don’t...I don’t know how to be anything but this.” His eyes are soft and his mouth is softer, pressing against hers in a kiss that’s more benediction than passion. He’s asking permission this time, millimeter by millimeter and Helen grants it, letting herself be pressed down into the sand by his body and letting his hands pull off their clothes with a deft efficiency that speaks only to experience. She has no such experience with humanity and this is as human as it gets.

The kiss changes then, striking a chord deep within her that seems to make her whole body ache with longing and lust and things she’s certain she’s only ever known about in the abstract. His hand brushes against her breast and the feeling grows stronger, unspooling her more and more rapidly as the seconds pass and by the time his cock presses into her, it’s like a dam is broken and every feeling she’s had over the past three or four thousand years comes rushing over her all at once.

She’s fallen. It’s the one thing they’ve been warned against and she’s never thought she had to fear it, has never come close to it, but now she’s falling and falling and she’s not entirely certain she ever wants to stop.

Afterward, the waves lap at the shore and her body feels heavy and languid, different, and when she presses her ear against Will’s chest, she can hear his heart beating. Fascinated, she tugs his hand to her own chest and he grins: she has one too.

The only thing that remains of their divinity are two feathers, one jet and one snow, floating on the ebbing tide.

**Author's Note:**

> The angels in this fic are a fusion of traditional Christian mythos and some smatterings of SPN and various other media. It has nothing to do with any one religion and no offense is intended on that front.


End file.
